Friday, June 1, 2012

To emanate, to heal through attention and affection

"When he (Walt Whitman, the poet) was in the city he went to Campbell Hospital to visit 'a couple of Brooklyn boys' from his brother's regiment. About a hundred wounded men lay in a long shed with whitewashed walls. Whitman stopped to try to comfort a boy who was groaning with pain. 'I talked to him some time'. Whitman wrote to his sister. 'He seemed to have entirely given up, and lost heart  - he had not a cent of money - not a friend or acquaintance.'

Discovering that no one had examined the boy since he was brought in, Whitman went and found a doctor. He sat on the bedside and wrote out a letter that the young man dictated to his family. 'The boy said he would like to buy some milk from a woman who came through the ward each afternoon, and Whitman gave him the change in his pocket. 'Trifling as this was, he was overcome and began to cry'.

This serendipitous encounter drew on so many elements of Whitman's personality that he soon abandoned his plans to return to New York. It not only touched his sympathy and generosity but gave him a chance to 'emanate' - to heal through attention and affection - and to fulfill one of his roles as a poet, committing to paper the speech of the illiterate boy.

He began to visit the hospitals daily. He wrote to friends in Boston and New York soliciting contributions so he could buy things for the soldiers, and soon he had settled into the routine that was to last all through the war - living in a rented room, working three or four hours a day at odd jobs, and visiting the hospitals."

Page 207, 'A Draft of Whitman', from 'The Gift, How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World' by Lewis Hyde

1 comment:

Rukhiya said...

I had come across a quote early in the day- Bis Vivit Qui Bene Vivit - One who lives well, lives twice.

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